Porous Organic Cage Nanostructures for Construction of Complex Sequential Reaction Networks

Living systems integrate complex sequential chemical reactions by spatially organizing enzymes confined inside subcellular organelles. Inspired by the ingenuity from nature, we have shown that the integrated artificial Pd cluster@porous organic cage-C3N4 catalyst can boost a series of sequential reactions, from simple two-step, to complicated multistep and even convergent catalysis. Specifically, the Pd cluster encapsulated cationic cage (Pd@C-Cage+) undergoes ionic complexation with anionic carbon nitride (C3N4–), in which C-Cage+ compartmentalizes the dual catalytic centers (Pd cluster and C3N4–) to accelerate diverse reactions via a substrate channelling effect. Moreover, the current artificial catalyst system (Pd@C-Cage+/C3N4–) is able to integrate diverse logic networks to achieve intricate digital designs by combining two concatenated AND gates and various inputs, which will inspire future chemical synthesis with enhanced efficiency.